You're reading: Zelensky vows to find and punish perpetrators of Gandziuk’s murder

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky has promised to find and punish perpetrators of the deadly attack on Kherson activist Kateryna Gandziuk.

“One year without Kateryna Gandziuk. All perpetrators will be found and punished. I promise,” the head of state wrote on his Facebook page on November 4 and posted a picture reading “A Year without Katya” in Ukrainian.

Activists held a rally “A Year without Katia” outside the Presidential Office in Kyiv and in other cities of Ukraine on November 4 in the evening.

As reported, on July 31, 2018, an unidentified person doused activist Kateryna Gandziuk with concentrated sulfuric acid near her house in Kherson. She was taken to Kyiv for hospital treatment and died on November 4, 2018.

Five suspects, including a man identified by a video surveillance camera as the buyer of the acid, were detained.

In February 2019, Kyiv’s Shevchenkivsky District Court extended until July 3 the terms of the pretrial investigation of Manher, Anti-terrorist Operation (ATO) veteran Serhiy Torbin, a deputy to member of parliament Ihor Pavlovsky, and Oleksiy Levin (Moskalenko) for committing a criminal offense stipulated under Part 3 of Article 27 (types of complicity), Paragraphs 4, 6, 11, 12 of Part 2 of Article 115 (premeditated murder) of Ukraine’s Criminal Code.

On May 7, 2019, the PGO approved and sent to the court a bill of indictment in criminal proceedings against five persons accused of causing grievous bodily harm that resulted in Gandziuk’s death.

On June 6, 2019, the Pokrovsky District Court of Dnipropetrovsk Region approved a plea arrangement between investigators and five suspects in the case and sentenced them to imprisonment.

On January 28, 2019, Kateryna’s father, Viktor Gandziuk, said during a hearing of the Verkhovna Rada’s special investigation commission into attacks on civil activists that the person suspected (of carrying out the crime) had ties with Manher, a member of the Batkivschyna Party, head of Kherson State Regional Administration and member of the Bloc of Petro Poroshenko Andriy Hordeyev and his deputy Yevhen Ryshchuk.

On January 31, 2019, Manher left Batkivschyna for the period of the investigation into Gandziuk’s murder. He denied all charges. On February 1, 2019, Batkivschyna Party’s political council suspended Manher’s membership for the duration of the investigation. On February 9, the party’s political council agreed to suspend Manher’s party membership.

On February 11, Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko said Manher was suspected of organizing Gandziuk’s murder.

On February 15, Kyiv’s Shevchenkivsky district court remanded Manher to pretrial custody until March 3 with the right to post bail. Manher left pretrial detention after posting Hr 2.5 million bail.

Another suspect in the case, Oleksiy Levin (Moskalenko) is on a wanted list. In December 2018, Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko said that law enforcement authorities had announced suspicion to Levin (Moskalenko) as a participant in the preparation and organization of the attack on Gandziuk. According to him, Levin has a criminal past and fled the country after the crime. In January 2019, the SBU put Levin on the wanted list. According to published information, he disappeared on August 19, 2018.